Exercise equipment, generally, may be any apparatus or device used during physical activity to enhance the experience or outcome of an exercise routine. Many exercises and sports involve a user catching or otherwise interacting with a ball travelling through the air, for example American football requires that players catch thrown passes or kicked punts, and the practicing of such interactions is necessary for the improving of a player's proficiency in the sport. A number of devices have been developed to aid in the improving of such proficiency, including automatic ball-throwing and ball-launching devices. Such devices, though, tend to utilize powered means of accelerating a ball and a sled to guide it into the air.
Examples of such devices include ball launchers and ball cannons, which are powered devices utilizing pairs of wheels spinning at high speed and accelerating a ball along an angled or curved sled. Such devices may be adjusted to alter ball speed and trajectory through the system, though tend to comprise heavy and expensive units requiring complicated system maintenance. A tension-powered mechanical design utilizing well-known catapult principles would result in a lighter, more mobile, more inexpensive, and more easily maintained ball launching system.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a mechanical sports ball catapult system. It is to these ends that the present invention has been developed.